The present invention relates in general to integrated circuit device structures and their fabrication. More specifically, the present invention relates to the fabrication of vertical field effect transistors with a strained channel.
Integrated circuit devices are a set of electronic circuits on one small chip of semiconductor material. A typical integrated circuit device includes many transistors. As feature sizes have become smaller, different types of transistor architectures have been developed. Among the newer types of transistor architectures is the fin-type field effect transistor (FinFET). A type of FinFET is the vertical FinFET, in which the current direction is vertical (normal to the substrate). It has been found that inducing strain in the channel of a transistor is useful to improve carrier mobility and device performance.